Growing up, like most children, Christmas was my favorite holiday. Mostly because I knew even if I good or bad Santa Claus was still coming to visit my house and leave a bunch of awesome presents. Toys, video games, sports equipment, and loads of other cool stuff. Once I found out there was no Santa when I was nine years old, Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday.

I love going to a family member you haven’t seen in a while house or when they come to your house. You can catch up, eat some snacks, drink come beers and watch/play football. Then of course there is the awesome food. There is nothing like sitting around the table with your family and the people closest to you and enjoying a home cooked meal.

Another reason Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday is the ‘Turkey Bowl’ game. Since 8th grade, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, my friends that I played football with growing up and a bunch of friends from home take part in a legit tackle football game with offensive and defensive lines. Sometimes we get a a kid’s dad to be the referee.

I think every day of the year should be Veterans Day and we as a society should do more to show how grateful we really are that men and women serve our country to make it a better place for us. I can not imagine what it takes or how it feels to be in a war or in a fire fight with an enemy that is trying to kill you.

There have been documentaries on the history channel and the military channel about World War 2 and the Vietnam War the past couple of days, and a lot of the men fighting look or they are younger than I am. You can go to war at 18 years old and you’ll come home 19 years old, but you’ve already lived a lifetime in that one year of duty. In some battles in WW2 there were 40,000 American casualties, it is really hard to wrap around your head around those numbers.

I just want to thank everyone who has served our country during time of peace of in a war. Thank you for keeping the USA awesome and the best country in the world.

This NFL season has seen more bone crunching and helmet smacking hits than we have seen in many years. Every player in the NFL, no matter what position, is looking for the opportunity to make a huge hit and “jack-up” his opponent. Getting “jacked-up” is different than just a normal tackle. Jacked up is when a player gets hit and probably leaves his feet, his body probably bends or moves in a way that it is not meant to move, and the player getting hit and sometimes the one delivering the hit is left seeing stars. The crowd then probably goes OOOO.

I think it is ridiculous for the NFL to fine the players the amount they have been for players making tackles. James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers has been fined $100,000 so far this season and his team has only played half of their games. Yes, they are professional athletes and make millions of dollars, but 100K is a lot of money for anyone. The NFL is trying to make the game safer for the players, but when do you draw the line.

These men are super humans. Six foot six, weighing 320 pounds and being able to run like a deer is not natural and pretty super human. The speed of the game is so fast that sometimes you have to jack a guy up in order to make the play for your team. How do you expect to stop a hard hit. I think if the NFL keeps fining players and starts suspending them, this is going to be in the back of the players’ minds and they are not going to play the game as fast or instinctive and I think that game will suffer.

It was Halloween this past weekend. Which meant it was time for girls to dress up in hardly anything and complain about how cold they are. And for guys it was time to round up random stuff around the house to try to make something that some what resembles a costume. What you get is a lot of fellows dressed up like nerds and hobos.

I remember when I was younger I used to plan out my Halloween costume several months in advance, and my brothers and I would plan out our trick or treat route around our neighborhood in order to get the maximum amount of candy in the little time we had. Halloween is really fun when you are a little kid and into early adolescence, but then once the middle school and high school years roll around Halloween and dressing up in costumes becomes “totally lame” and trick-or-treating is for little kids.

Now that I’m in college, Halloween has become fun again. It is fun to see who has a totally awesome or hilarious costume and to dress up and have fun like you did when you were a kid. The candy has been replaced with beer and trick-or-treating has been replaced with going from door to door to see who is throwing a crazy party.

I have to create a blog and write 6 one hundred fifty entries for an assignment in my journalism class. There is no set criteria for each entry and is pretty much a free write. I can write about whatever I want, but I don’t know what I want to write about yet.

My name is Brendan Dunne and I am a 21 year old senior at Kutztown University. Kutztown is a state school located in Berks county, Pennsylvania. There really isn’t much to do here, but I have a solid group of friends that I always hang out with and we seem to find stuff to do alright. I’m from Coopersburg, Pa, which is a small town 15 minutes outside of Allentown and about an hour outside of Philly. My family and I are originally from New York, but we moved here when I was seven. Even at 7 it was already too late to become a Philadelphia sports fan, the New York teams had already rubbed off.